It's surprisingly difficult to find a swarm of one billion locusts

• BBC America's "Planet Earth II" just premiered in the US.• The "Deserts" episode features jaw-dropping footage of a locust superswarm in Madagascar.• Producer Ed Charles told INSIDER that finding the swam was one of the team's biggest challenges.

While filming the "Jungles" episode of BBC America's brand-new "Planet Earth II," producers and camera operators were always running into venomous spiders and snakes on accident. It's hard to avoid them, actually: Jungles are jam-packed with more than half the world's species.

The crew of the "Deserts" episode had the opposite problem.

"The biggest challenge we faced in the field was, bizarrely, finding animals," producer Ed Charles told INSIDER. "Deserts are generally quite empty places, and other than at a few special spots, such as waterholes, the animals are often few and far between."

This held true for all the animals featured in the episode — even a swarm of one billion locusts.

But the locusts move more than 60 miles a day, and the crew — often held back by flooded roads — couldn't seem to catch the bugs before they'd moved on to their next location.

Finally, with help from a local expert and a helicopter loaned from the UN, the team ditched their ground search and found a one-billion locust swarm from the air.

"My most memorable achievement has to be the locust sequence," Charles said. "It was such a huge logistical challenge to get, and is one of the biggest swarms ever recorded on film — plus we were able to film it from the air, which is no mean feat!"

The crew also got footage from inside the swarm itself.

A locust swarm in Madagascar.
Associated Press

Just the thought is enough to make entomophobes shiver. But Charles found the experience awe-inspiring.

"Certainly before I went on the shoot, I had lots of friends and family freaking out on my behalf, wondering how on earth I could be in a swarm of locusts, but it was never something that bothered me," Charles said. "However I wasn't prepared for how amazing it was to be inside a swarm. The locusts don't hit you or fly into you — instead they part like a stream around a rock, flying within a few inches of you. Also, the sound made by so many billions of wings all beating in unison was incredible, like a deep roar of a waterfall, but almost on the edge of hearing."

The locust swarm isn't the only heart-pounding sequence in the "Deserts" episode.

Charles's team also captured footage of lions teaming up to hunt a massive giraffe, bats hunting venomous scorpions in the dead of night, and birds called sand grouse who fly 125 miles every day to gather water for their thirsty chicks, to name just a few.

"Deserts" airs at March 11 at 9 p.m. on BBC America. You can also learn more about the locust chase in the "Making of Planet Earth" episode — it airs March 25 at 10:10 p.m.